Coming home: the elephants of Panda Masuie

(Photo by Laurel, Mindful Safarian 2024, during our visit to Panda Masuie)

Dear Subscribers,

I am currently in Victoria Falls for Mindful Safari season. We have had one lovely group of Mindful Safarians through and are getting ready to welcome the next.

In this quiet moment between visitors I want to share a video taken by one of our fellow safarians, Amanda, during our visit to Panda Masuie elephant rewilding centre last week, because I know a number of you are very engaged in what happens there.

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For newcomers to this newsletter, part of subscribers’ money is donated to Wild is Life/Zimbabwe Elephant Nursery, which is the pre-eminent elephant rescue centre in Southern Africa. Founded by Roxy Danckwerts, Wild is Life/ZEN accepts baby elephants who have been orphaned, almost always in tragic circumstances, and not only feeds them and gives them the 24 hours love and attention they need to survive, but also helps them integrate into an orphaned herd.

Once the herd is mature enough, all the elies are relocated to a re-wilding site near Victoria Falls called Panda Masuie. This facility is not open to the public, so it is one of our great privileges to be able to visit it and spend time meditating and opening our hearts to the elies.

A wonderful endorsement of the rewilding process happened in January when, to everyone’s surprise, one of the former orphaned elephants, Annabel, gave birth. No one even suspected she was pregnant! I mentioned the story in an earlier post. Not only did it seem somewhat miraculous that orphaned Annabel had met a wild bull and become pregnant out there in the wild, but a further miracle was that another female in the herd, Norah, starting producing milk to help Annabel feed baby Summer, in a process called sympathetic lactation.

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I should point out that there is nothing stopping the elephants from spending days, months, or forever out in the bush. It is the hope that eventually they will stay out all the time, and integrate with the elephant herds which roam these lands. For the moment, if they wish to come back to Panda Masuie, they may do so in the happy knowledge that they will be kept safe overnight from predators and have plenty to eat.

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This week, after months of anticipation, we had a chance to see Annabel, Summer, Norah and another female called Masu, return home from a day in the bush. Amanda, took this video of the moment they emerged from the bush to a special part of a boma (like a corral) which is theirs alone to use, protecting the baby overnight from the other, bigger elephants. Baby Summer, just months old, really is incredibly cute as you can see! Her poor Mum, attacked by a lion when she was very young, is missing the tip of her trunk, which you can notice in the final moments of the video.

I just love the light, the energy of the approaching elephants, and the sense of happiness as they return home. It really is such a moving experience to witness.

From first to last we see Annabel arrive with Summer, and aunties Masu and Norah.

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In future weeks I will be posting more on this year’s extraordinary Mindful Safari. In the meantime, I hope you may feel some of the wonder of our time with the elephants, and the peace of our meditation sessions on the deck overlooking the much-visited watering hole and sprawl of bush.

“Now, looking back on my life in Africa, I feel like it might altogether be described as the existence of a person who had come from a rushed and noisy world into a still country … So lovely, as if the contempation of it could itself be enough to make you happy all your life.”

Karen Blixen, Out of Africa

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For more about Mindful Safari click here.

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